The Naked And The Nude

I suppose that I must have been 18, going on 19. My friend Grant Grantham had the hots for a girl named Janey. But Janey didn't go anywhere without her friend Barbara. So Grant drafted me in the make up a foursome.

'You'll like Barbara,' Grant assured me. 'She's your type.'

When I was 18, going on 19, I didn't even realise that I had a type. But Barbara - a year older than me, big brown eyes, shoulder-length dark hair, and a ready smile - turned out to be OK. And then, after three or four dates as a foursome, Grant and the love of his life, Janey, suddenly 'fell apart', but Barbara and I kept on seeing each other.

Apart from having big brown eyes, Barbara had a big brain. She was studying art history, and one of our first dates as 'the main act' (with Grant and Janey, we had only ever been the support act) was a visit to an art exhibition entitled

The Naked and the Nude

. As I later discovered, the title of the exhibition was borrowed from a poem by Robert Graves.

'The naked and the nude?' I said. 'Aren't they just different ways of saying the same thing?'

'You tell me,' smiling Barbara said.

I remember that we had this snippet of conversation while standing in front of a couple of almost life-sized oil paintings. One was entitled

Naked Woman with Straw Hat

. The other was entitled

Nude No 31

. 'Umm ... gosh. I don't know. Just a question of the name that the artist gives the painting?' I suggested.

'You tell me,' Barbara said again.

'Me? Tell you? Fat chance,' I said. 'You're the one studying art. You're the expert on these things. I'm just ...'

Barbara laughed. 'I'm not an expert yet,' she said. 'But OK ...what I think the curators of this show are asking us to think about is are the naked and the nude the same thing? I mean ... how would you describe this painting,

Nude No 31

?'

Nude No 31

was a painting of pale woman, seated on a fabric-draped cube (or something). Her body was in light, but her face was largely in shadow. Beside her there was a pedestal, and on the pedestal there was a rustic-looking copper jug. I'm not sure why. I thought about the painting for a moment or two before admitting that I didn't really know how to describe it. Not in art terms anyway. 'Umm ... elegant?' I suggested tentatively. 'A bit ... well ... classical? Reminiscent of a Greek sculpture?'

'And the woman with the straw hat?'

Naked Woman with Straw Hat

was just that: a naked woman with a straw hat. She was sort of laying back in some sort of garden chair, with her legs spread for all to see what she had between them. She might have been a centrespread in

Penthouse

or

Hustler

. I thought about that painting for a moment or two as well. But, in the end, there really was only one answer. 'Well ... that one I'd describe as sexy?' I said. 'Or am I not allowed to say that about proper art?'

Barbara laughed. 'You can say whatever you like. I certainly think she's sexy. I think she's very sexy. I think the artist must have thought that she was sexy too. I think that's why he painted her the way that he did.'

After an hour or so at the exhibition, debating which of the paintings were nudes and which belonged in the naked category, we retreated to Barbara's tiny, book-filled flat.

'I'm going to make some tea,' Barbara said. 'In the meantime, have a look at these.' And she took a couple of large-format books from one of the bookcases. One of the books was a paperback called

100 Nudes

. The other was

The Essential Egon Schiele

.

I leafed through both books. The pictures in each were certainly very different.

'So ... what do you think?' Barbara asked when she returned with a teapot and a couple of ceramic beakers.

'Well ... these are nudes. Obviously,' I said, pointing to

100 Nudes

. 'It even says so on the cover.' And then I pointed to

The Essential Egon Schiele

. 'And these ... these are naked. This guy's stuff is properly sexy.'

Barbara smiled and nodded, and poured the tea. 'It's a pity that I don't have anything of Marius Marks that I can show you,' she said. 'Marks didn't even bother with the pretence of calling his paintings nudes. As far as he was concerned they were simply naked portraits. Portraits of people without their clothes on. People who were naked.'

'Naked portraits? Yeah, that makes sense. Although I suppose that also meant that the pictures had to be recognisable for who they were.'

'Oh, they were. He made sure of that. He also fucked most of them.' And Barbara laughed. 'Well ... the women, anyway. I'm not sure about the men.'

I laughed too. Perhaps a little nervously.

'Seriously,' Barbara said. 'If I remember correctly, he had three wives, countless mistresses, and I think he owned up to about a dozen kids. Plus there were a few kids whose mothers claimed were his, but he denied.'

'Gosh. I hope he was successful,' I said. 'I mean ... I hope he made plenty of money with that many wives and that many kids.'

'Probably not when he was starting out. But, in later life, his paintings sold for hundreds of thousands.' And then Barbara suddenly returned to her bookshelf. 'Actually ... now that I come to think about it, I do have a couple of his naked portraits.' And she pulled out an illustrated auction house catalogue. 'These illustrations are rather small - and his painting tended to be quite large - but you can get the idea.'

Yes. The paintings definitely fell into the naked category. 'Very sexy,' I said - now that I knew that I was allowed to think that. 'Do you think that he meant them to be sexy?'

'I assume so,' Barbara said.

When I was 18 going on 19, I don't think that it had ever occurred to me that a proper painter would set out to paint paintings that were actually sexy. I suppose that I thought they would have to ... well ... tone them down a bit.

'So ... what do you want to do now?' Barbara asked when we had finished our tea.

'I don't know,' I said. 'What would you like to do?'

'I think I'd like you to fuck me,' she said. 'We haven't tried that yet.'

No, we hadn't tried that. In fact, I hadn't tried to fuck anyone. I guess I was a bit of a late starter. I don't think that I was particularly confident when I was 18, going on 19. Oh, I was confident enough on the sports field. Give me a rugby ball or a tennis racquet, and I was Mr Confidence himself. And I certainly wasn't backward in coming forward in my Stage One English Lit classes. But between the sheets (as they say) ... 'Yeah, we could do that,' I said. 'You know ... if that's what you want to do.'

Barbara smiled, and kissed me. And then she took me by the hand and led me into her girlie bedroom.

'OK?' she said, with a slight frown.

'Umm ... yeah. I was just ... umm ... wondering ... you know ... how you want to do this. I mean ...' But what did I mean? Yes, I'd seen a few porn videos. But I wasn't sure that they had really been that helpful. For a start off, I wasn't Barbara's son. (And Barbara wasn't my mother.) Nor was I her lecherous uncle who had just caught he between bathroom and bedroom when she thought that she had the whole house to herself. I wasn't even the pizza delivery guy.

'Why don't you start by undressing me?' she said. 'And we can take it from there.'

'Yeah. Right,' I said. But even then I wasn't quite sure where to start.

'Or perhaps I could undress you,' Barbara said, probably sensing my hesitation. And that's what she did. With a fair bit of touching and kissing thrown in. And then she started to take off her own clothes. 'There,' she said. Naked. Not nude.' And she smiled.

'I guess so,' I said. And she did look good. Her boobs were bigger than I had expected. They were each about the size of a small melon. When she was dressed, they didn't look that big. But, without her loose-fitting shirt and her smooth, full-cupped bra, they were definitely not something to be ignored. Also, her nipples stood out. You could have hung your hat on one of them. 'You look very ... well ... sexy,' I said. (There was that word again.)

'Thank you,' she said. 'You look pretty damn sexy yourself. I particularly like the way your cock is pointing at me.'

'Oh. Sorry,' I said.

'No, don't be,' Barbara said. 'I like that he's showing willing and intent.' And, before I knew what was happening, she had taken my cock in her hand and something (or someone) had set off a fire cracker in my chest, sending my heartbeat into overdrive. Kerr-thump! Kerr-thump! Kerr-thump!

With her other hand, Barbara took my hand and placed it at the junction of her toned thighs. 'I think it must have been the afternoon of sexy naked portraits,' she said. 'I'm as wet as an otter's pocket. Here ... feel.'

When I was 18 going on 19, I had never felt an otter's pocket. But I could somehow imagine that it might be pretty wet. And furry. And, yes, Barbara' pocket was pretty wet too. Wet ... and slippery. And furry.

Barbara fell back onto the bed, pulling me down on top of her, her right hand still firmly attached to my now-rigid cock. 'Are you ready?' she said.

I'm not at all sure that I was, but I nodded anyway.

Barbara spread her thighs and, next thing I knew, my virgin cock was being sucked into her deliciously warm and wet tunnel. Things were going from brilliant to even more brilliant. And then I thought: What if I can't hold on? What if ...?

I tried to think about something else. Pi to umpteen decimal places perhaps? Yes, that might do the trick. Three point four one five nine two ... six five three five ... But, no, that wasn't going to be enough. I tried spelling sequipedalianism. And then I tried spelling sequipedalianism backwards. But that too proved to be too easy.

And then Barbara closed her thighs slightly and, suddenly I could feel the soft hair that covered her lady lips brushing the sides of my cock. Perhaps if I just stayed still for a few moments. But Barbara wasn't having any of that. Oh, no. And then she started to squeal and giggle and make little animal-like sounds and she started to buck like a frisky filly. And then ... and then it was too late. Despite my best efforts, I had somehow reached the top of the hill. And someone had pushed me off the top. And sent me tumbling over the edge, down the other side, with my cock pumping spunk like a fireman's hose.

'Sorry,' I said, when I managed to catch my breath.

'For what?' Barbara said.

'I tried to hold on,' I said. 'I just ...'

Barbara laughed. 'I think it was looking at all those sexy pictures,' she said. She looked at her watch. 'Two and a half hours of foreplay. Who would have thought? I almost feel that we should send a thank you note to some of those artists. Of course, at least half of them are now dead. But their paintings still do the business.' And she laughed again.

For maybe a couple of minutes, neither of us said anything. And then I just had to ask. 'Was it ... was it OK for you?' I asked.

'Oh, better than OK,' she said. 'Couldn't you tell?'

'It's just that ... well ... I hadn't done it before,' I said. 'You know ... not properly. Not with a girl. I've masturbated, of course. But that was the first time that I've ...'

Barbara propped herself up on her elbows and kissed me. Not a full-on, passionate, lover's kiss. Just a ... an affectionate peck. 'That's OK,' she said. 'I've only ever done it a few times. And that was definitely the best time. By a long way.'

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the fact that Barbara had already done it with someone else. Possibly several someone elses. But I guess one of us had to know what we were doing. And she did say that doing it with me was the best.

When you're 18, going on 19, these things are sometimes kind of important.